Is spaceship armor useless?

[Mirtai]

Originally Posted by Varyon

That depends on how you use them. Firing a barrage of missiles and demanding surrender can work - if your target powers down their weapons and power plants, you redirect the missiles elsewhere (or blow them up prematurely, if that's an option), then board and take the ship...

You know... that's exactly what happened in my playtest with the missile carrying fighter vs the Cargo Ship with the point defense lasers. The Cargo Ship "surrendered" and powered down, and the fighter detonated the missile he fired. Of course, it was a ruse, but using the Missile to force a surrender was the tactic used.

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

Railguns Spaceships style are pretty much good for a laugh, not any sort of actual fight.

So far in my playtests, I find Railguns quite good at close range. They can fire faster (sometimes significantly faster) than an equivalent missile battery, so they're harder for point defense to stop... and they do nearly as much damage. In close range, the railgun rounds will reach the target before the missiles do, at least in the TL 9 to 10 range of things.

And of course, they do more than enough damage to punch through most armor. They're excellent for stopping suicide fighters from reaching your ship, for example, because of their high damage and high volume of fire.

On a separate note, I have also noted that bigger beam weapons can equal or exceed the range of missile weapons in the same TL, if they're big enough... and since a Beam weapon has the advantage over a missile in that at long range it'll hit the target many times before the a missile can cross the distance, someone with a heavy beam weapon will usually win the fight quite easily unless their opponent has enough armor to take the hits from it.

A classic battleship will have a combination of weapons... point defense lasers for defense, of course. A battery of Railguns or conventional guns for close in barrage against tougher foes that get in close (they'll wipe out suicide bomber type fighter attacks, for example), missile launchers... for obvious reasons, and very often, a Major or Spinal Battery Beam weapon which can take out lightly armored targets that like to fight at long range with missiles.

No design is perfect, of course, but I'm still convinced that a Pirate Ship could do just fine with Beam weapons, good engines and good armor alone, and be quite effective in a fight, as they could use, for example, a Spinal Beam Weapon to take out their opponent while using Point Defense VRF lasers to destroy incoming missiles. Naturally, a missile boat with enough ammo could probably throw enough missiles at the target to eventually get through any point defense, but that's what the Spinal Weapon is for, to destroy the target's weapon systems in the first few seconds of combat... preventing it from firing more than a single load or two of missiles.

Armor has a very vital place in this sort of engagement of course. If you've got 2 or 3 armor locations with hardened armor in your forward section, you can probably take a few hits, even from a Spinal beam weapon... and if you don't, you're meat for the grinder.